Statuettes depicting the Four Seasons

Balthasar Permoser was already 39 years old and had been successfully active in Florence, when he took up his work as court sculptor in Dresden in 1690. The ivory statuettes of the four seasons were created in the last few years of his stay in Italy or at the beginning of his time in Dresden. Spring is portrayed as a young woman with delicate, mincing steps. She is Flora, the goddess of agriculture with sheaves of corn, represents the summer. Bacchus, the inebriated god of wine, his head wreathed in grapes, stands for autumn. Vulcan, the god of fire, in the guise of a shivering old man, symbolizes winter.